Towns, county plead for tight state cash

The Grant County Prospectors held their annual legislative forum on Tuesday, during which three of the county’s representatives in the state Legislature heard the priorities of organizations from across the area — covering areas ranging from health care, to education, to tourism. Given the state’s slight and slow financial rebound over the last year, organizations returned to requests for funding rather than just the legislators’ advocacy or intervention with state agencies.

The Prospectors are a nonpartisan “group of business leaders whose purpose is to educate policy makers and community members about the economic, community development and legislative needs in Grant County,” according to their website. Each year, they gather the county’s legislators together with leaders in other fields to hear their legislative concerns and general updates, along with the groups’ requests for funding through capital outlay funding allocated to each legislator — in an amount which varies based on the condition of the state government’s budget. The Prospectors then take the information to Santa Fe on Grant County Day during the session, when they help the organizations secure audiences with the departments or legislators to whom they need to plead their individual cases.

For the last two years, the state’s budget has been in such turmoil that legislators either had no money to give or the total amount of the legislators’ capital outlay monies was appropriated to statewide projects. Legislators were clear to the organizations in those past years that they should expect no financial help.

In place of funding requests, many — especially the local governments of the county — uniformly complained that state agencies, especially the Department of Finance and Administration, had been holding up reimbursements to the local governments, slowing or crippling capital projects.

Heading into the 2018 legislative session in January, oil revenues — the decline of which has been chiefly blamed for the state’s recent budget woes — have been up enough for the organizations to once again ask for capital outlay dollars for their projects. Democratic District 28 state Sen. Howie Morales, though, said there will likely still be financial troubles ahead.

“This may be the first time since I’ve been here that there hasn’t been a problem with grant agreements being held up or communicating with DFA,” he said. But, “as we go into 30-day, it’s not going to be much different than in several years.”

Republican District 38 state Rep. Rebecca Dow said that she has heard that legislators are expected to get around $160,000 apiece to distribute among the various local governments, schools, health care organizations, nonprofits and other organizations they represent. Despite the three legislators collectively looking at less than half a million dollars if that estimate is right, throughout the day Tuesday the lawmakers heard from 21 organizations — each with needs or requests specific to their functions — with requests that totaled well into the millions of dollars.

Democratic District 39 state Rep. Rudy Martinez said limited capital outlay funds are more difficult for more rural districts like those in southwest New Mexico than for those containing segments of larger cities.

“It is a challenge for us who represent multiple counties,” he said. “Some of those legislators in northern New Mexico, in the cities, their districts are three square blocks rather than 300 square miles in rural areas.”

Local government project funding requests were nearly all more than $100,000 each. Grant County requested $285,000, for instance, for the renovation of the District Courthouse roof, which County Manager Charlene Webb said would help delay the need for the roof’s eventual removal and replacement.

The county also requested $120,000 for three 4×4 vehicles for the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, plus equipment. In fact, several of the local governments requested help replacing their aging vehicle fleets. The village of Santa Clara requested enough funding to replace two of its aging maintenance department pickup trucks, which they described as missing bumpers and clunking down the street. The town of Hurley requested funding to replace a 1990 John Deere backhoe, the older of two much-used backhoes the town owns, which Fernando Martinez said is used for everything from street repairs to digging graves.

The request for funding for the vehicle purchases is just one of many that local governments are competing for. With funds likely to still be limited, the legislators and local governments also discussed policy and legislative solutions to some problems. And, according to Sen. Morales, this is going to, of course, involve fierce political debate in Santa Fe.

“My concern is that in order to balance the budget, they’ll try to make further cuts,” Morales said. “We can’t continue to cut away and expect to get anywhere. And, you’re going to hear a State of the State speech in January that will go like this: ‘We’ve been able to weather the storm without raising taxes,’” he said. “The truth is, we have been raising taxes and will likely continue, by forcing local governments to do the raising. We cannot be pushing down on the local governments. In an election year, no legislator is going to want to raise a food tax. What I don’t want to see happen is the state say, ‘Here, local governments, you want the food tax? You raise it.’”

This question of adding a food tax has been rolled about the Roundhouse for years now, in an attempt to fill holes in the state’s budget. It would actually reinstate a gross receipts tax on groceries that was removed during Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration. Many Republican leaders, in particular, have introduced the possible return of the food tax, arguing that most of the low-income New Mexicans its removal attempted to protect actually have EBT cards or food stamps, and would therefore be exempt from paying the tax regardless.

Rep. Dow asked several of the local governments how the return of a food tax would affect their coffers and their residents. Bayard City Clerk-Treasurer Kristina Ortiz said that while she hasn’t checked all of the numbers with the city’s only local grocer, the Food Basket, she didn’t think the move would be good for the city.

The other governments’ representatives shifted to what possible aspects of tax reform they did think would help them. County Manager Webb said that the county would benefit most from a simplification of the state’s gross receipts tax increments for counties.

“There are 20 different increments, some you can’t even use,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. It could be better utilized. There is a lot sitting out there that is wasteful.”

Silver City Town Manager Alex Brown said that spreading the tax burden and changing income tax would help the town grow.

“The best would be to look at eliminating all deductions and decrease the rate so everybody pays their part, and [so that] it’s more stable for small communities like ours,” he said. “When we look at income tax, too, it’s the reason we’ve never looked at expanding our boundaries outside the city limits in areas like Indian Hills. Well, we would get a little bit of property tax, but it would actually be an expense. If we could get a little bit of income tax, because those are the higher income areas of town, we would offset that. Being able to get a diversified income base would help communities like ours.”

The 2018 session of the New Mexico Legislature is scheduled to be 30 days long. That means it is chiefly a budget session, but can address other bills if Gov. Susana Martinez calls for them.